Yesterday the former state and Launceston chapter president of outlaw motorcycle club the Rebels was handed three years' jail for drug trafficking on a scale ``not often seen in Tasmania''.

When police arrested Picard in 2011 he was responsible for suppling not only the statewide chapters of his club but also its rivals.

The 67-year-old was netted by Operation Dorothy, a six-month police operation targeting the organised trafficking of meth throughout the state.

In Launceston's Supreme Court on Monday, Picard pleaded guilty to trafficking 36 ounces of the drug.

Its street value was estimated to be somewhere between $128,000 and $504,400, depending on how it was on-sold.

Picard bought the drugs from Ravenswood's Barry William Gleeson, sentenced to one year in jail in 2012, who sourced it from interstate.

Gleeson sold the meth to Picard for $4000 an ounce with the ninth ounce being free.

Picard's defence counsel Adrian Hall said his client would on-sell the ounces for $5000.

Police phone taps recorded drug deals between Picard and members of other Rebels clubs, as well as the Launceston chapter of the Outlaws.

Yesterday Crown prosector John Ransom described Picard as being at the ``apex of a trafficking chain''.

Mr Hall said his client was officially bankrupt and suffering a cocktail of medical problems.

In sentencing, Justice Stephen Estcourt said Picard had never been to jail and had no relevant prior convictions. ``By any measure this was a large scale commercial drug trafficking operation of a kind not often seen in Tasmania,'' he said. 

Justice Estcourt ordered that $10,200 in cash that police found in Picard's car be forfeited to the state.

However, he declined to make a pecuniary penalty order for $117,800 requested by the prosecution, because of Picard's likely inability to pay it.

Justice Estcourt ordered Picard serve a non-parole period of 18 months.